PTSD is
Month: February 2026
A Few Short Videos I Ran Across Yesterday:
Chelsea with some pointers:
And for no particular reason but that I ran across it; I guess it’s a Corgi thing:
And a protest video:
More In Black History
LaMonte McLemore and Other Black Stars We Lost in 2026
We are honoring all of the Black stars who left us in 2026.
By The Root Staff Published February 5, 2026
UNITED STATES – CIRCA 1969: Photo of Fifth Dimension, c.1969, California, Los Angeles, Fifth DimensionL-R: Ron Townson, Florence LaRueBilly Davis, Jr., Lamonte McLemore, Marilyn McCoo. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
We’re not going to lie, 2025 was a tough year, as we lost many of the Black legends we knew and loved. Now, as 2026 gets underway, we must say goodbye to even more of those who had such a tremendous impact on the culture. Although they are gone, they will never be forgotten.
(snip-brief celebratory obits/photos on the page. A few of them have been posted here, lat year. While you peruse our losses, enjoy this next one from The Root, too! I would listen to Luther Vandross sing the phone book.)
The Essential Luther Vandross Playlist of His Best Songs
The late Luther Vandross is still a trending topic thanks to the 2026 Grammys. So what better time than now to take a look at some of his best songs!
By Shanelle Genai Published February 3, 2026
LOS ANGELES – 1995: Singer Luther Vandross poses for a portrait in 1995 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Harry Langdon/Getty Images)
Although Kendrick Lamar and SZA walked away with the 2026 Grammy for Record of the Year for their song “luther”—which sampled the 1982 Luther Vandross hit “If This World Were Mine”—the late iconic singer still somehow became one of the hottest topics of the night.
This was thanks in large part to Cher’s hilarious and accidental flub, announcing Vandross as the winner instead Lamar. But still it made for a good reason to talk about the legendary singer and his musical contributions. It also got us thinking about our favorite Luther Vandross songs and so we’d figure what better way to wax poetic about them than by putting together our top favorite tracks of his for the best of the best playlist!
Fair warning though: this list will make you move and groove so make room wherever you are!
People Are Fed Up With ICE’s Crimes
Political Cartoons / memes / and news I want to share. 2-5-2026
The above is my life. Am sorry if this brings you down but these are what I struggle with every day 24 hours a day. I really want to thank the wonderful people / community support I have gotten. You are the most wonderful to understand how hard it can be for me some days. Hugs
Education and Healthcare lowest ranked on the states report card Alabama ranks in the bottom 10 for education, with higher education at 42nd and Pre-K through 12th grade at 43rd. California ranks 37th in Pre-K-12 education according to recent reports, with challenges in areas like high school graduation rates and college readiness.
The Steele Dossier connected Russia with Trump. Over and over again.
Marco Rubio paid for the research.
Then Republicans lied about who paid for the research and tried to pin the dossier on Democrats.
Then dossier was tainted and degraded as partisan.
What did we learn? Republicans are Russia,and Republicans will lie about anything.
“Let’s stick with gray scale for our midwinter just-as-they-head-home-from-work palette.”
Baby, It’s Cold Outside
Good Evening, Everyone!! It was 15 degrees on this unknown-numbered day of the apocalypse. I salted, chipped ice, shoveled while I shivered, my shoulders ached, my lips chapped… I’m so looking forward to the greens of spring!
In all honesty, though, I’m a Michigan kid. I had some of my favorite days on winter sleds, building show forts in plowed snow piles, snowball fights (and yes, I did save one in the freezer just to throw it at my sister in June :D) and snowmobiles. I can ice-fish without a shanty, cross-country ski and drink peppermint schnapps with the best of them. So, this year’s winter has been a measure of beautiful nights of softly falling snow while I sat by the window with a hot cup of coffee – you know, in the midst of the shoveling and salting and freezing and stuff. I remember it more fondly as a kid?
May you find your moments of zen in the harshness that life brings. Stay Warm!
randy
So Get A Load Of This, And
check to make sure your state isn’t trying to do the same thing. It’s insulting that ours would think we don’t know better, but this rings like some sort of ALEC type of a thing; those generally go national, or at least all red states. Anyway:
HCR5027: Proposing to amend article 1 of the constitution of the state of Kansas by adding a new section establishing a system of electing the governor and the lieutenant governor by creating a state electoral college whereby each state senatorial district would have a vote in selection of the governor and the lieutenant governor.
Current Status: In Committee (House)
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And from my State oversight newsletter:
| Top Stories of the Day |
| The House Elections Committee wants to elect Governor with an Electoral College |
| Most days, I rely on BillBee and other monitoring tools to flag the most important activities of the prior day and use those to substantially prepare this newsletter. Yesterday’s action, though, goes beyond anything we’ve tracked in two years of covering Kansas politics. |
| HCR 5027 proposes replacing the direct election of Kansas Governor and Lieutenant Governor with an electoral college. Under this system, voters in each of the 40 state senate districts would effectively be choosing an elector…not a governor. Those 40 electors would then cast the actual votes for our state’s top executive office. |
| If that sounds familiar, it’s modeled on how we elect the President. But with one critical difference: each senate district’s elector would carry equal weight, regardless of population. (It’s also unconstitutional.) |
| Why That Matters |
| Kansas senate districts vary significantly in population density. Rural western Kansas districts and suburban Johnson County districts each get one elector under this proposal, despite representing vastly different numbers of voters. This is intentional. |
| The proposal also includes a failsafe for the majority party: if no candidate pair wins 21 electoral votes, the Legislature elects the governor in a joint session, with each legislator casting one vote. Given the current supermajority dynamics in Topeka, this framework would likely cement one-party control of the governor’s mansion for a generation—regardless of statewide popular vote totals. |
| The Fine Print |
| You won’t find much about HCR 5027 on the Legislature’s website yet. At the time of this writing, the draft language appears only on page 1,709 of the House daily journal. Here’s the full text: |
| Be it resolved by the Legislature of the State of Kansas, two-thirds of the members elected (or appointed) and qualified to the House of Representatives and two-thirds of the members elected (or appointed) and qualified to the Senate concurring therein: Section 1. The following proposition to amend the constitution of the state of Kansas shall be submitted to the qualified electors of the state for their approval or rejection: Article 1 of the constitution of the state of Kansas is hereby amended by adding a new section to read as follows:” § 17. Electoral college for governor and lieutenant governor.(a) The governor and the lieutenant governor shall be elected by an electoral college consisting of one elector from each state senate district, for a total of 40 electors.(b) In each state senate district, the candidate pair for governor and lieutenant governor receiving the highest number of votes shall receive such district’s elector, who shall be pledged to vote for governor and lieutenant governor.(c) The candidate pair receiving a majority of the electoral votes which shall be at least 21 votes shall be elected governor and lieutenant governor. If none of the pairs receives a majority, the legislature shall elect the governor and lieutenant governor in a joint session from among the two pairs receiving the highest number of electoral votes. Each member of the legislature having one vote and a majority shall be required to elect the governor and lieutenant governor.(d) Electors shall be qualified voters of Kansas, residents of their respective senate districts and nominated in advance by political parties or independent candidate pairs in accordance with law. Electors shall meet and cast votes as prescribed by law. Any elector voting contrary to their pledge shall be subject to penalties as provided by law.(e) The legislature shall enact laws to implement this section, including procedures for certification, meetings of electors, handling of ties or vacancies and enforcement.” Kansas House Committee on Elections |
| Constitutional Questions |
| As a constitutional amendment, HCR 5027 would need two-thirds approval from both chambers before appearing on a statewide ballot. Voters would then decide. |
| But even if passed through that process, the proposal may face legal challenges. Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution guarantees states a “Republican Form of Government”—language the Supreme Court has historically avoided interpreting, but which scholars argue requires some baseline of representative democracy. Whether an electoral college that can override the popular vote meets that standard is an open question. |
| There’s also the matter of the Kansas Constitution’s own Bill of Rights, Section 1: “All men are possessed of equal and inalienable natural rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Courts have historically read such provisions as foundational to equal voting power. |
| Part of a Pattern |
| HCR 5027 doesn’t exist in isolation. This session has seen an unprecedented wave of election-related legislation, much of it now law: |
| Already signed: |
| SB 4: Advance ballots must arrive by 7 p.m. Election Day (no more postmark grace period) SB 5: Blocks federal election funds without legislative approval HB 2020: Requires DMV to send quarterly lists of noncitizen license holders to election officials HB 2106: Bans out-of-state contributions to Kansas constitutional amendment campaigns SB 105: Governor must pick replacements for U.S. Senate, state treasurer, and insurance commissioner from a three-name list approved by a new legislative committee |
| Moving through the House: |
| HB 2438: Limits online voter registration to .gov websitesHB 2452: Move local elections to even-numbered yearsHB 2525: Bans remote drop boxes for advance ballots |
| And that’s before counting the 23 other bills referred to the House Elections Committee this year alone. |
| What Happens Next |
| HCR 5027 is currently in the House Elections Committee. As a constitutional amendment, it faces a higher procedural bar than ordinary legislation, but in a supermajority environment that bar is not insurmountable. |
| We’ll be watching. |
Resistance Is Everywhere
Berkeley Students Make 300,000 Wikipedia Edits to Preserve Queer History Against Trump
Their work has already racked up nearly 100 million views.
By Abby Monteil January 27, 2026
Amid the Trump administration’s ongoing attempts to erase queer and trans history, a University of California Berkeley professor’s students are working to right these wrongs — through Wikipedia edits.
Over the past decade, students in ethnic studies, gender and women’s studies, and performance studies professor María Rodríguez’s courses have edited and even created Wikipedia articles about LGBTQ+ history, with an emphasis on queer and trans people of color. The assignment currently replaces a final paper in three of her classes: “Documenting Marginal Lives,” “Queer of Color Cultural Production,” and “Queer of Color Critique.”
Rodríguez’s Wikipedia assignments take place in partnership with Wiki Education, a nonprofit that works with university professors in the United States and Canada. The professors’ students add content to course-related Wikipedia articles, which, according to the organization’s website, helps them gain skills like “media literacy, writing and research development, and critical thinking,” while simultaneously filling Wikipedia “content gaps.”
“Wikipedia is a public-facing project — it’s the largest encyclopedia in the world,” Rodríguez told UC Berkeley News in a December interview. “In a political moment where these histories are actively being erased from public view, having students work on a platform like Wikipedia becomes even more important.”
According to The Daily Californian, as of January 26, Rodríguez’s students have contributed over 300,000 edits and 3,000 citations to Wikipedia. At the time of writing, their work has garnered a whopping 96 million-plus views. Her students’ topics run the gamut, touching upon local history like the resonance of queer life in San Francisco’s Chinatown, as well as more international focus areas (for instance: worldwide sex worker movements).
As Rodríguez explained to UC Berkeley News, her students’ edits often help address the disparities between the amount of Wikipedia information about white, Anglo LGBTQ+ populations versus LGBTQ+ populations of color.
“It becomes particularly important to document these subcultures within these communities,” she said. “Because it’s not just queer Latinas — it’s queer goth Latinas, it’s queer comics of color, it’s African American slaying, right? It’s very specific topics that might really vary by region, by historical moment, and of course at different places around the world. Those topics, in Wikipedia and in real life, remain really under-studied and really under-researched.”
These contributions carry a newfound weight during the second Trump administration, in which officials have repeatedly attempted to erase references to queer and trans history. In February 2025, National Park Service websites removed the word “transgender” from multiple pages for historical programs and monuments, as well as references to trans figures such as Marsha P. Johnson. Meanwhile, in June, an unnamed Defense Department official told Military.com that Trump timed an order to remove LGBTQ+ icon Harvey Milk’s name from a military ship to coincide with Pride Month.
“Right now, the Trump administration is trying to erase the very existence of transgender people, so having information about those histories, as well as present challenges facing queer and trans communities, is particularly urgent,” Rodríguez told The Daily Californian via email. “Queer and trans people have always been here, and adding that information to the world’s largest open access encyclopedia is one way to make sure that these stories remain available.”
https://www.them.us/story/berkeley-college-students-wikipedia-lgbtq-history-edits
Having A Hard Day?
HUFFPOST: The ICE Handbook Tells A Damning Story About The Death of Renee Good
The ICE Handbook Tells A Damning Story About The Death of Renee Good
Training material, which HuffPost obtained, shows the multiple ways agents didn’t follow agency rules.
Read in HuffPost: https://apple.news/AeEqBH-GsRjO81krdQ9EiSg
Shared from Apple News
Best Wishes and Hugs,Scottie
Scottie's Playtime 